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Dear all,

One morning during my senior year of college, I had coffee with a beloved and brilliant professor. The details of that morning’s conversation have vanished, except for one comment that he made: He was reading through all of Mary Oliver’s books of poetry, a little bit at a time before bed each night. Later, in the year following my graduation, I remembered my professor’s comment and went looking for Oliver, wanting to do the same thing. Every night before bed I would read her poetry, working chronologically through each book.

Poetry is such a gift. It’s not something that I thought much about until after I graduated, not something I particularly enjoyed or felt I understood. I don’t think I would have gone looking for Mary Oliver if I hadn’t respected my professor so much – himself a prolific and gifted poet – but I’m so glad I did. Oliver introduced me to an entirely new experience of words and how they slip and slide and fall and swim, distinctly different from prose. Over the years I have slowly begun to explore different poets, from Ross Gay and Marie Howe to Rainer Maria Rilke and, more recently, Lucille Clifton.

Today, June 27, is Lucille Clifton’s birthday. Born in 1936 in upstate New York, Clifton was Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 1974-1985. (More Maryland connections: she was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and died in Baltimore in 2010.) She was a prolific writer, publishing many collections of poetry as well as children’s books. Clifton has been described as “saying much with few words,” the space on the page shaping meaning alongside the text. Her poems eschew most capitalization and punctuation, getting down to the essentials, leaving something that vibrates with presence on the page. Here is one example:

spring song

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible

Sometimes I want to wring definite meaning out of words, want the plot clear and definite, the characters clearly labeled, and the thesis in the first paragraph. But poetry does something different. Clifton’s “spring song” gives life to the fluttering feeling I sometimes have: of the newness and possibility of life in and with and through Christ. It opens a new dimension, lifting off from the altar in my imagination and out into the sky, wafting and dancing on the wind – a reminder of the Spirit’s movement everywhere. Another poem that draws me in:

my dream about the second coming

mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.

when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.

Can you picture Mary? Can you imagine the stranger at her kitchen table, dressed in lights? Are you wondering about the Something that she feeds, too? There is so much beauty and divinity surrounding us, so much of the Holy Spirit everywhere. I have been encountering it in Lucille Clifton’s poetry recently – where have you felt it move? What is the Something dropping at your feet – where is the green of Jesus breaking through in your life?

Love,

Rebecca+

P.S. For more on Lucille Clifton, check out this biographical page from the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lucille-clifton. You can listen to Clifton read “spring song” here.

 

 

Dear Folks,

It’s summer! And if you can find a cool spot, and a few minutes, slow down. Grab a notebook or a journal, and fill a page or two with your thoughts:

• What’s going well right now?
• What do you need to change?
• What hurts?
• Who can you thank for their role in your life?
• Does anyone deserve an apology?
• How can you frame an old struggle as an opportunity?
• Who or what is calling you?

To hear better at this time of year, I read a bunch of books. Maybe it’s the extra light at the end of the day or changing gears at work, but somehow the time seems to find me, and I surrender to its prodding. “Sit still, and listen,” it says. “Others have struggles to share, and the victories of making their way through.” So I read, and I take notes when something particularly strikes me, and I lose myself in someone else’s narrative. And frequently I find some part of myself in the process. What are you reading this summer? What are you seeing and feeling and thinking?

My current stack looks like this:

Whiskey Tender, by Deborah Jackson Taffa, is her memoir of growing up as a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo. It’s funny and poignant and bracingly honest, the story of a mixed tribe Indigenous family with one foot in mainstream America and the other dancing the mystery of an ancient people.

Scattered Clouds, New and Selected Poems, by Rueben Jackson. The collection contains the full text of “For Trayvon Martin,” and additional poems explore family, music, mortality, and the streets of the author’s Washington, DC. It’s full of yearning, insight, and “rueful wisdom.”

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingslover, a retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield. According to a review, the novel “speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.”

The Hidden Spirituality of Men, by Matthew Fox. Author Fox explores why the life of the Spirit is often inaccessible for men, devoting his work to ten metaphors designed to awaken the sacred within us.

On Trails, an exploration, by Robert Moor. Continuing the work I discovered in A Philosophy of Walking, I look forward to Moor’s work on trails of all kinds. While through-walking the Appalachian Trail, the author began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet. “How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own?”

Boundaries of Soul, the practice of Jung’s psychology, by June Singer, part of my training in Spiritual Direction at the Haden Institute. (Full disclosure: I am reading this book again, after plowing through it this winter!) Jung has introduced me to a further kind of walking—down and deep and dreamy.

Good travels, wherever the path takes you this summer.

Love,
David

Do you find yourself using words like “always” or “never” to describe experiences or events in your life?  For example, do you say things like, “Oh, I never win anything” or “They’re always complaining about something?”  I admit it.  I used to talk like this—a lot.  But the tribe I run with now says that we create our own reality by using or misusing our words because the energy of spoken words carries so much power.  I am trying to listen to them.

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “If you say to a mountain MOVE, and believe it…, it will move….” So I even hear Jesus saying we can create our reality by speaking what we believe to be already true.  In this instance, the internal power to move a mountain being made manifest through speech.

If we believe and say that we never win anything, then we don’t win anything because we have set ourselves up with an expectation to get what we already got…no winnings.  It has taken me more years than I can count to learn that I was creating an unhealthy emotional situation for myself that made my life miserable!  Human beings are body, soul, and mind (including our psychological and emotional states).  So what maps of reality are we using to create the language of so many always and nevers?

Maps of Reality are REAL.  I have no idea when or where the concept of “map of reality” originated, but it seems to have arisen in the very early 21^st century as techies worked with ordinary citizens to originate the earliest designs for virtual reality systems.

From a consciousness perspective what we define as real is based on our history and the comprehension of the experiences in our past.  In other words, we are conditioned to assign meaning to how we perceive life early on in life.  This very human way of understanding what we experience by our senses can make or break us if we remain unaware (unconscious) that they are perceptions that may or may not be real (in alignment with Truth).  Remember the question from Pilate, “What is Truth?” 

A map of reality is a powerful concept, and everybody has one, even if we don’t realize it. It still colors our days, thoughts, moods, emotions, and how we relate to others. I was blessed to meet someone who had a very different way of looking at things. My beloved Charles was instrumental in helping me to accept my perceptions as mine and not necessarily his in a loving way. Love is always evolving and enlightening on the road of life.

So, here’s my invitation.  Listen to yourself speak.  Become aware.  Find the always and nevers and kick-them-to-the-curb!  They simply don’t allow us to live in the state of blessedness that is our birthright.  The blessed state has everything to do with who you are, manifesting in what you do (or don’t do).  Nevers and always just don’t make space for the Divine, who both IS, DOES, and LIVES in every breath we take.  Think about it.  I did.  Maybe something to make you go, “hmmm….”

With Love,
Freda Marie+

I imagine you’ve figured out by now, that things don’t always go as you planned. You have your day mapped out, and a phone call changes everything. You have your career or job well in hand, and then a restructuring of your company leaves you packing up your office or desk in a box. A diagnosis demands you rethink and reorganize your life in a way you never imagined. A decision is made over which you have no control that nonetheless impacts you and those around you.

Things don’t always go as you planned.

I was reminded of this yesterday, amidst the torrents of rain and wind. A colleague and I were sitting together, reviewing some PowerPoint slides and getting ready to present to a group of D. Min. students gathered at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute, when a text came in. It was about a pastoral issue, and it required my immediate attention.

My mind began to race.

What about the group at St. Mary’s and the commitment I had made, to be with them? What about my colleague, who I had invited to do the presentation with me and had not planned to do it solo? What about the family that had just texted me, what state were they in?

I closed my eyes.

Inhale … Exhale … Breathe …

(And then repeat: Inhale … Exhale … Breathe … Deeply … and then again … and again … )

I have found that this simple practice — of taking the time to stop, pause and mindfully, intentionally and consciously breathe — amidst the swirling and twirling of thoughts and wonderings that can flood in like a torrential downpour, when what you have planned collides with the reality of What Is — is a powerful tool. It helps “make space” for what is essential in that moment to rise to the surface, so you can realign your steps along the new path required.

Yesterday, for example, with each deep breath, the way forward revealed itself.

I need to go be with the family, now.

My colleague will be fine doing the presentation solo (and as it turned out, another colleague was able to “pinch hit” for me and help).

The group at St. Mary’s will understand.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the Spirit guiding us into truth, and I often reflect on what he said in connection with this practice of mindful, intentional, deep and conscious breathing.

So if things don’t go just as you planned for them to go, today (or tomorrow, or the next …) …

Stop. Breathe. Listen.

And let the Spirit of God guide you into truth.

Love,
Cristina

Dear all,

It has been a joy and a privilege to serve as Chaplain at Redeemer’s Parish Day School for the past four years. During  my first year, we met for chapel every week on the lawn between the garden and the third grade learning cottage, outside like the rest of PDS classes and activities to try and keep one another safe as we navigated the pandemic. Even in that new and different space, we held on to some of the parts of chapel the students identified as important: lighting candles, receiving and blessing chapel food, and telling stories about God. “Give a big wave around chapel,” I said every week at the beginning of the service, “because it is so good to be here together.” Any time where we could all be together was a gift.

Now it is the spring of 2024 and the class of Pre-First graders I met in 2020 are graduating from third grade. Chapel has moved inside and we now have two services, one for our 2/3s-Pre First graders on Wednesdays and one for elementary schoolers on Mondays. During Wednesday chapel we still light candles (much more easily without wind); we still receive and bless chapel food; and we still tell stories about God together. During Monday chapel, students serve as acolytes, we have an order of service, and each class takes turns writing and sharing prayers for the week. On Mondays the older children pass the Peace to one another, but on Wednesdays I open our service with the same phrase:  “Give a big wave around chapel, because it is so good to be here together.” It is still so true.

Gathering each week of the school year with PDS students has been a gift. Learning from their questions about God and faith, their wonder, and the empathy and feeling they share with characters in our sacred stories has made me a better priest, a more curious and thoughtful person. Whatever I go on to do, our prayer and laughter and curiosity and praise will always be a foundational part of my ministry, and I could not be more grateful. And it’s not just me. Our entire community is enlivened and enriched by our relationship with PDS, their staff, students, and families: new voices in the building, new relationships beyond our campus. We have been and continue to be blessed (by God and by the hard work of many people over the last 70+ years) to have a school as a part of our parish community. It is so good to be here together.

PDS is on my mind this week because Wednesday was our last chapel of the year. On Monday, our very first class of third graders will graduate, with Pomp and Circumstance on the organ and an entire community changed by the experience. Please keep these 11 members of our Redeemer community in your prayers on Monday, over the summer, and in the fall: Miranda, Joaquin, Ben, Maddie, Sam, Blythe, Leland, Nathan, Emily, Will, and Jack. As they set out to new schools and new adventures, may they continue to grow and bless their new communities the way they have blessed ours. May they remember that they will always have a home here at Redeemer. And may they carry our love with them, surrounded by the love of God, the friendship of Jesus, and the wisdom of the Spirit everywhere they go.

Love,
Rebecca+